Terrance Dicks' Space:1999 Adventure

Among classic Doctor Who fans Terrance Dicks is not just a legend, but someone to be revered. Longtime script editor for the show during its 70’s heyday, he was responsible for shepherding dozens of great stories through the process from concept to script to screen. After he stepped down from his editor role, he continued writing for Who  and contributed several scripts to the show including Robot, The Brain of Morbius, Horror of Fang Rock and The Five Doctors. His connection to Doctor Who goes even deeper because that during and after his time on the show he also was the main writer of the famous Target imprint that novelized various Doctor Who storylines in print. Indeed, he was the first writer to be tasked with this project that soon grew to be a major second career for him. His understanding of the show and his ability to translate scripts to novels made him the most beloved contributor to the series and set him up for a career in publishing that continued for the rest of his life. It was through the American reprints of these Who novels that I first became aware of him and began to seek out his name when prowling bookstores. In my youth, Dicks’ novels were the only way I could hope to experience several classic Doctor stories.

But of course, Doctor Who is not the only show that he wrote for and, although I've been aware of this for years, I never actively sought out any of his work on other television programs. That is, until lately. I recently learned that he wrote an episode of the mid-70’s Gerry Anderson TV show Space: 1999 and, since just last year Shout Factory was kind enough to put out both seasons on Blu-ray, I thought I would check this episode out and discover if it were any good. Luckily, I received that Blu set as a very welcome Christmas gift last year so the show was just a couple of button pushes way!

The episode is called The Lambda Factor and I have to admit that - of the handful of second season episodes that I've ever seen - it's actually pretty darned good. One of the failings of the Space:1999 second season is that in an attempt to create a more action-oriented show some of the first season’s cerebral attitude was thrown out. This figured to make the show less sleep inducing (because it could be dull as dirt) and better paced. Interestingly, The Lambda Factor splits the difference between these two approaches with a heady central concept married to a tense unfolding of dark emotions that trigger murder and despair. Dicks has some expressed surprise that his script made it to the screen with almost no changes and has stated that he was pretty happy with the finished episode. I was impressed enough with this one to slate into my schedule a possible reassessment of the much derided second season of Space: 1999. Such is the power of Terrance Dicks!